Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Aurora, sent a letter to President Barack Obama Thursday urging him to protect jobs in NASA’s Orion crew-capsule program.
I’d much prefer, however, that he get behind the commercial crew-cargo policy proposed to replace it, so that there might be more jobs created in the broader space industry. Clinging to the program of record after it has been shown to be unsustainable and unaffordable, merely forestalls the inevitable and squanders an opportunity (and resources) to shift to a more open-ended policy.
I’d expect a Colorado Republican to be more amenable to a capitalist policy than this. Especially an incumbent whose district includes several space-related companies which would benefit from growing markets and the creative influence of competition.
UPDATE: added NASA’s coverage of the launch, from liftoff through (I’m guessing) max-Q.
Congratulations to SpaceX on a successful first launch of the Falcon 9. With any luck, they just drove a 180-foot-long aluminum stake through the heart of Ares-I. Heh.
It’s amusing, though, that a company founded by a dot-com millionaire can’t seem to get a webcast video to work properly. But I suppose there were other, more important concerns this morning.
Oddly enough, the launch was originally scheduled (the aborted attempt) at the same time as the biweekly all-hands teleconference with the LM Orion management team — otherwise known as the “everything is fine, don’t panic” meeting. I missed the first part of the meeting, but the portion I sat in on was dominated by voices sounding like relatives of Milton from “Office Space”, asking tediously detailed and irritatingly petulant questions about layoff notices, benefit rollovers, job transfers and other HR matters “for when the time comes”. A very strange juxtaposition.
One of the good things about the Falcon 9 success is that it will help still some of the critical voices speaking out against commercial crew and cargo, and newspace in general. Or if not still them, at least force them to find something else to complain about regarding newspace, much as successful missile defense intercepts forced critics who claimed it was physically impossible to pull off an intercept to find some other rationalization for their opposition. Had the launch failed, it would have been much more difficult to establish credibility for newspace — with this success, however, the industry can probably tolerate a few less than successful follow-on launches before losing the credibility established by SpaceX.
Bigelow supports the new commercial-focused NASA manned-space policy. Not surprisingly, because it also helps their own business model — which, I think, is the best part of the new policy. Flights to ISS might pay the bills, but it’s the expansion into new areas of business independent of NASA that will make commercial crew services sustainable.
I just hope they don’t wait too long for a commercial provider to emerge. There’s scuttlebutt going around that they are working with multiple contenders to assure that they aren’t left without some means of getting to their station(s).
If James Cameron is so passionate about restoring the 3D camera to MSL/Curiosity, then…instead of lobbying, and urging, and taking his concerns to the NASA administrator, why didn’t he just pay for it out of pocket?
I don’t know that he didn’t, or didn’t offer to do so (the article doesn’t say), but it seems like the obvious thing to do for a guy with a passion and a couple billion dollars in the bank. Indeed, a sponsorship arrangement with NASA would have been a coup for both. Trade Cameron the rights to market the resulting imagery in exchange for underwriting the camera, let him produce a theatrical 3D documentary using it, and both win: Cameron cleans up at the box office, and NASA gets a great PR and education/information outreach opportunity.
Well, you would have thought so from some of the nailbiting hall talk and email at work today concerning the announcement that the Obama administration will push for the cancellation of Constellation, replacing it with initiatives aimed at bringing the nascent commercial spaceflight industry into bloom. The doom and gloom around Orion was in (understandable) contrast to the delight (or simple satisfaction) seen around the space blogosphere.
I think Michael Mealing comes closest to my own attitude towards this development:
President Obama’s new policy for NASA is the most fiscally conservative and downright capitalist policy to come along since the agency was founded.
And yes, it really boggles my mind that that should be the case. Obama? Capitalist? Who’da thunk? As one co-worker quipped today, Obama seems confused: he wants to nationalize a private industry in healthcare, but privatize the national program in manned space. One thing that has really surprised me today is how many of my friends have called or emailed me, expressing shock and disappointment that we are now “abandoning” space – unwittingly accepting the premise that a government program is our only possible means of getting people there. The perception that government is the sole entity capable of conducting manned spaceflight is so ingrained and unquestioned that it doesn’t seem to occur to even those who claim to be capitalists to question it.
But of course, I have to temper my surprise and excitement at this prospect, much as I did regarding the newfound enthusiasm for nuclear power Mr. Obama expressed in his SOTU last week. There’s going to be a lot of haggling to get the Congressional NASA caucus on board with this (although one Senator who could have been expected to be among the biggest roadblocks seems to be climbing on board – however reluctantly). It’s going to take some time, and who knows, just as ESAS made a dog’s breakfast of the VSE, so too could Congressional compromises and NASA resistance turn the promise of this new policy direction into yet another dead end.
As with the big healthcare speech back in September (the occasion of the NPR incident), my commentary was delivered in the more transitory medium of live heckling of the teevee screen. This time around there wasn’t a neighboring table of kool-aid-guzzling Obama worshippers hissing and whining back at me, unfortunately, which took a bit of the fun out of it.
Apart from Fox’s amusing Drudge-like juxtapositions of lines from the speech with camera shots of topically-relevant politicians, there was only one thing that I liked about this SOTU: Mr. Obama’s promise to push for next-generation nuclear power in the U.S.. Of course, just like his promises to freeze (parts of) federal spending, expand government transparency, and usher in a new bipartisan civility, I realize that we are as likely to see any action on that promise as we are to see the National Mall host unicorn chariot races.
The rest of the speech was a nauseating stew of all-things-to-all-people statism and incongruous attempts to steal the fiscal responsibility and small government themes the Republicans are gearing up to campaign on in the fall, seasoned with the usual Democrat pathos and anger and garnished liberally with Mr. Obama’s trademark nose-high smugness. Noticeably absent yet again was any mention of NASA or space policy in general. “So what’s new?”, one might ask. Amid all the yammering about green energy trendy greenwashing scams and investment in taxpayer subsidization of (politcally sexy) science and technology, it’s still a little surprising that federal space policy didn’t merit a mention this time around, especially if the rumors are true that a change in that policy towards more climate monitoring (green!) and commercial services (jobs!) is imminent.
Although Keith warns that the story is premature and may not be correct in its particulars, this Science Insider preview of the Obama administration’s revised space policy (particularly regarding Constellation) indicates that it might include some longed-for Christmas presents…including (and especially) the cancellation of Ares I.
I can’t say that I’m thrilled at the possibility of handing off Altair and the hypothetical lunar base to international partners, given the distortions that imposed on the ISS (e.g.: the higher-inclination orbit that allowed Soyuz to reach ISS from Kazakhstan). Nor am I especially enthusiastic about the possibility of accelerating the development of the unneeded Ares V, but I do recognize that it would be a political necessity to appease Sen. Shelby (R-Huntsville Makework Jobs) should Ares I actually get the long-overdue and well-deserved axe. Nor am I thrilled that NASA may be given $1-4B more, given the waste that has already plagued Constellation (Ares-1X, MLAS, and Ares I design mitigations, for example).
The potential stocking stuffers in this story, though, are the appearance that commercial cargo to ISS is finally being taken seriously as a part of NASA’s operations, and (personally, since I work on Orion) the possibility that Orion could switch to riding an EELV as it should have from the beginning. If true, the former will be a big boost to a true commercial space transportation industry, and the latter will make our design job on Orion a heck of a lot easier through more benign launch and abort environments and mass margins (not to mention the stack won’t look like a corndog any more — that’s just embarrassing). While the rumored policy update does nothing to address what I consider to be the root problem — NASA shouldn’t be doing this stuff in the first place, but rather (if anything at all) encouraging through tech transfer and incentives the growth of robust private sector space industries — it would at least be a step towards a somewhat more sensible way of doing what the agency has been tasked with doing.
… If no USG option to deliver cargo and crew to LEO is to be developed following the retirement of the Space Shuttle, the U.S. risks the failure to sustain and utilize a unique facility with a sunk cost of $55 billion on the U.S. side, and nearly $20 billion of international partner investment in addition.Why is Dr. Griffin so concerned about the ISS when he got rid of most of the ISS science and non-assembly engineering?
Why is he so concerned about the ISS when his exploration plan requires the ISS to be abandoned in 2016? If the commercial COTS cargo services do not get built, Griffin’s plan already leaves us with no ability to get cargo and crew to the ISS until 2017-2019, after the ISS is abandoned! Even if the ISS is kept until 2020, and funding appears out of the blue to both support ISS and develop Ares I/Orion at a “brisk” pace, having Ares I/Orion in, say, 2018 does not make that much a difference. Plus, let’s be clear: keeping that schedule is highly unlikely given the funding needs of the ISS.
The notion of abandoning the ISS just five years after completing it has been getting a lot of attention lately, but I have to wonder, what does “abandon” really mean? If the international partners wanted to continue funding and servicing and using it for…umm…whatever ISS is actually used for beyond being a self-licking lollipop, would NASA permit it?
More interestingly, if NASA decides to terminate its own involvement with ISS, and a private company wants to make use of the station for space tourism or other commercial purposes, would NASA stand in the way? Or would it mulishly insist on deorbiting the station despite (or to spite) the offer of commercial utilization? After the fiasco with Mir, it’s a valid question.
